Online Sports Betting: Legal or Illegal?
Sports betting or gambling has grown to be increasingly popular through the years. Its popularity was further intensified with the growth of online sports betting, also known as internet gambling. However, online sports betting have long been the topic of most controversies. And, one specific area of discussion is its legality.
Usually, when it comes to considering online sports betting, it’s very common for anyone to wonder if theyre breaching any local or state law. As you might know, sports betting happen to be deemed illegal in many countries in the world, and one particular area that strongly uphold anti-sports betting law is definitely the North America. In this region, most states and even the government have passed legislations about whether or how it is lawful or not to gamble online, and offline.
However, it is just until recently that this regulating online sports betting was left entirely to the discretion of the individual states in North America, and to some degree, the dawn of online sports betting created certain degrees of confusion about the jurisdiction. One main question that prevails is who runs the laws in the virtual world. As you may know, some of the current gambling laws were generally created and proposed prior to the coming of the internet. This fact is what actually makes the application to those established laws accessible to different interpretation.
Aside from the question about the online sports betting laws, another question was raised by the concerned public, that is, when it is legal to operate sports betting on the internet or offshore and take action from clients in the United States? Well, the regular response to this by the US government is that offshore or online sports betting are not legal.
So it is given that online sports betting are deemed illegal by the US government. However, numerous reports have revealed that no bills have been passed to stop the concept of online sports betting. Much worse is the fact that, several efforts to pass bills in order to prevent the enduring popularity of online sports betting dramatically failed.
Perhaps a particular reason that caused the failure of the passing of those anti-sports gambling laws would be that the federal government has placed most of the responsibility of the legislations for gambling in the hands of individual states, in which a few of these states have approved the practice of online sports gambling.
Several of those states in fact voted on legalizing the online sports betting, and North Dakota is one of them. On the other hand, there are many states like Illinois which have added certain legislations that strictly prohibit the promotion of online casinos inside the state. As far as I know, only three states in America have strongly prohibited its people from gambling past the state borders: California, Louisiana and Nevada.
Today, since some states have enforced anti-gambling laws, although loosely, several sportsbooks on the web have decided to stay offshore in foreign countries. And, to prevent breaching the laws, they rather set up their computer servers also offshore. It’s just somehow essential to remember that although anti-gambling laws are passed, no citizen has even been arrested for considering online sports betting.